Gov. Christie’s administration just cut a surprise deal in lawsuit against Exxon for decades of toxic contamination -- virtually getting the wealthiest oil company in the world off the hook for $8 billion in damages to communities and wetlands.
If you look at Gov. Christie’s past connections with Exxon, this shadiness isn’t much of a surprise. Exxon contributed ~ $2 million to a group that helped finance his reelection. It’s pure political corruption -- the kind of quid pro quo politics that gives major polluters like Exxon big breaks while road-blocking progress on clean energy and climate, or programs to mitigate the impacts of future storms.
And to add insult to injury, it’s unclear whether any of the proposed $250 million settlement would even help the communities Exxon polluted for decades.
It’s time to stand up to Big Oil and corrupt politics. It’s unacceptable for Gov. Christie to give big breaks to his wealthiest campaign donors on the backs of families living in storm-damaged homes and with toxic dumps in their back yards.
Now is an especially important time to speak up because Gov. Christie still has the power to stop this dirty deal in its tracks. Sign this petition to demand that he hold Exxon accountable for its devastation to New Jersey communities and wetlands.

Those we have elected are failing the Australian people and they are failing the natural world. They are allowing the cruel and unnecessary slaughter of sea creatures and the ruin of undersea habitats.
We demand our Governments manage natural resources and the global commons solely in the best interests of present and future citizens. Our oceans should not be exploited by individual nations or corporations but held in trust for the benefit of all and for future generations.

Gas companies are currently exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act and do not have to disclose the chemicals in the pipeline; a pipeline leak could contaminate water sources with undisclosed chemicals. When the pipeline is not within 220 yards of at least 10 homes, it is not inspected and incidents are not required to be reported. The Gas will not benefit our energy prices and the pipeline will cross SIX counties, the Souhegan River, numerous wetland and preservation areas and construction blast will impact school zones and private water wells. PF14-22

There are 2 very good reasons why this makes sense.
First, the UK government subsidizes oil, coal and gas by over £2 billion every year, and the companies (like Shell, BP, Centrica etc.) will ask for even more money – that’s our tax money – this year because the oil price is low, and finding it and drilling it out of the ground is costing more.
So why should we help these companies to balance their books? For the G20 countries alone – and the UK is a major member – these subsidies are a massive £59 billion ($88billion). According to The Economist, the global figure is $550 billion.
As described February 3rd in The Guardian Sustainable Business, US government support for shale gas fracking in this low oil price regime is like supporting the failing banks during the mortgage crisis that led to the crash of 2008. Will our next UK government think that our own oil and gas companies are also (just like the banks) “too big to fail”?
As The Economist put it, we have a once in a generation opportunity to “Seize the Day” and fix our energy policy, and why not.
Secondly, and closer to our hearts, our legacy to our children and grandchildren should be a sustainable world, in which they can thrive, free from fear of war and irreversible climate change. In October 2014 Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, stated that the majority of burnable fossil reserves may be considered unburnable if global temperature increases are to be limited to our internationally agreed target of 2degrees Celsius. Nature Magazine’s report in January 2015 shows real data to confirm this.
Also in October Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti warned MPs that global warming, particularly from global reliance on oil, natural gas and other fossil fuels would be a driver of global instability, resulting from conflict over resources, and from a growing number of “natural” disasters due to climate change.
Continued reliance on fossil fuels threatens our children’s legacy of peace and sustainability.
We have a golden opportunity to help secure our future; let’s stop these subsidies now.

Global accords between nations take many years to develop, and many more years to ratify, implement and ultimately benefit from. This one cannot wait any longer. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference of the parties in Paris 2015 (COP21) is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our leaders to take action and create real and lasting change that benefits everyone, everywhere.
There is a lot of work left to be done. But there has also been a lot of progress since Kyoto in 1997, Copenhagen in 2009, and Lima in December 2014. Lima began the negotiation and drafting of a landmark agreement to be signed at the Paris conference. The goal is in sight.
We cannot miss this opportunity. We must stand up, raise our voices, and demand that our leaders agree on climate action once and for all.

Coal generates 70 percent of electricity in Ohio -- while polluting the air, harming human health, and contributing to climate change.
It's time to phase out dirty, outdated power plants that run on coal. But Ohio’s largest electric utilities — AEP, Duke, and FirstEnergy — want to lock in this dirty source of energy for years to come. In pending cases before the Public Utilities Commission, they’re trying raise customers’ electric bills to pay for coal plants that are no longer competitive in today’s market.
Earlier this year, AEP alone requested to charge Ohio citizens $117 million to keep two coal plants built in the early fifties up and running. Now, AEP has upped its request to cover six coal plants. Duke Energy is asking for a similar amount, but for an even longer period of time.
Meanwhile, FirstEnergy is trying to force customers to pay for all generation and maintenance costs of its 55-year old Sammis coal-burning power plant and the Davis-Besse nuclear plant (guilty of numerous accidents and violations over its 35-year lifespan), just to name a couple. The proposal covers 15 years. At the same time, FirstEnergy is also cutting its customer energy efficiency programs.
It’s wrong to ask people in Ohio to pay more for dirty energy they don’t want, especially when it harms public health and the climate.
If the Public Utilities Commission approves these requests, it would block progress on clean, renewable energy sources by forcing them to compete in a market skewed toward propping up outdated, dirty energy. It would lock in dirty coal in Ohio for years to come, when the state should be transitioning to clean, renewable sources of energy.
Now is an especially important time to speak up, because some of these decisions are expected by the end of 2014. If you live in Ohio, sign this petition to urge state leaders to stand strong against dirty coal and defend our rights to a clean, safe, and livable future.

We are seeing more and more the devastating effects of climate change and fossil fuel exploration over the years. The BP oil spill was a wake up call to many, but not enough unfortunately. It showed the devastating events that occur when companies are not held to high standards and allowed to regulate themselves. It also shows how our dependence on oil can damage our planet in direct ways and also ways we will not even understand for years to come.
The allowance of the construction of this pipeline is a way of saying, we don't want to think of the future health of our planet and people. To not allow this company to move forward with this will be a move forward for progression. Progression towards a planet that cares about our environment. Progression towards a nation that can lead the way in renewable energy if it wants to. Progression towards a future that is cleaner, healthier and more sustainable. If we do not act now on these events, we are only hurting ourselves more in the future.
Change can be hard, but it is up to us as concerned citizens to speak up when we can see what is happening around us. It is then our responsibility and the people we chose to represent us to act. Please stand wit us and help us fight this fight.

Let us outline seven reasons that make this pipeline so dangerous to global climate generally and to our treasured Florida specifically:
1) Ultra Toxic, Ultra-Crude Tar Sands “Oil”
2) Atmospheric CO2 is Already Unsustainably High
3) The Athabasca Tar Sands are a Carbon Bomb – Not Business as Usual
4) The Jobs Mirage
5) Losing Summer Arctic Sea Ice
6) Miami as World’s Most Vulnerable
7) Sea Level Rise Threatens Florida
1) Ultra Toxic, Ultra-Crude Tar Sands “Oil”
This stuff is heavier than water and sinks into the water table when spilled, so the oil companies have no method to clean it up. This ultra-crude is loaded with a secret cocktail of chemicals to make tar flow, similar to those used in fracking, which have been kept secret from public view.
2) Atmospheric CO2 is Already Unsustainably High
The last time we had the current level of 400 ppm (parts per million) of CO2 in our global atmosphere was millions of years ago, before the recent rhythm of the last 40 ice age cycles began. There were crocodiles swimming in the Arctic Ocean and global sea levels were about 71 feet higher than they are today. Most of Florida was underwater in this ancient hothouse world. This fate is the new equilibrium that our planetary spaceship is destined to achieve with the CO2 levels already emitted by our ancestors and us.
This procrastination has already proven to be extremely expensive. How much did the New Orleans levee rebuild programs by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cost? Miami Beach has a $20 million seawall and pump project to buy another 20 years of tourist income. Mayor Bloomberg has proposed $50 billion dollars to storm-hardened New York City, with a $10 billion down payment from the Sandy relief funds.
3) The Athabasca Tar Sands are a Carbon Bomb – Not Business as Usual
They have been safely sequestered under a beautiful Canadian boreal forest area the size of the entire state of Florida for tens of millions of years. This area has been populated by first nation Athabasca Indians over the last 8,000 years, since they walked over from Siberia. This single deposit contains 400 gigatons of carbon that would, if totally consumed, increase global CO2 levels by an additional staggering 200 ppm. It has a carbon footprint half again larger than conventional crude oil.
4) The Jobs Mirage
According to President Obama, there will be 50 permanent jobs with good pay to operate the completed pipeline and at most a few hundred short-term jobs – mostly in India making the pipe and a few U.S. construction workers driving highly mechanized installation machinery.
5) Losing Summer Arctic Sea Ice
There is half the volume of summer sea ice that there was 3 years ago, according to Prof. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. He believes that late summer sea ice will disappear entirely in the next few years for the first time in millions of years. This is a tipping point!
Unfortunately, the global models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have given false hope when compared to current observations. Glacial ice in Greenland and Antarctica are observed to be melting far faster than IPCC models, which will transform the rate of sea level rise from an inch per decade into a foot per decade by century’s end – unless we rapidly transform our carbon economy to a renewable energy economy.
6) Miami as World’s Most Vulnerable
A 2007 OECD report, Ranking of the World’s Cities Most Exposed to Coastal Flooding Today and in the Future, ranked Miami as #1 in the world, with the most exposed assets to flooding both today ($416 billion) and in 2070 ($3,513 billion). This ranking reflects the extremely low topography of Miami and the expected sea level rise plus increasing storm surge vulnerability.
7) Sea Level Rise Threatens Florida
The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact published “A Unified Sea Level Rise Projection for Southeast Florida” in 2011. This group settled on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers forecast curves for guidance, which did not include the impact of Keystone tar sands.
The relative sea level rise scenarios for South Florida show three curves. The lowest, Curve II, is an extrapolation of historical trends of last century, which includes none of the effects of global warming and which few climate scientist believe will hold in the future. Curve I assumes the world makes a maximum effort to reduce greenhouse emissions, which has not yet occurred but would be far cheaper than adaptation. Curve III is the curve for business as usual, showing a 2-foot rise in 50 years and a 6-foot rise in 100 years. That would reduce South Florida to an unlivable condition and cost over $3.5 trillion, according to the OECD.
If the Keystone/Athabasca Tar Sands were consumed, we would need to calculate a new, 4th curve much higher and much worse than the 3rd curve that effectively drowns South Florida.

Virunga National Park, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. International law clearly states that these sites are off limits to resource exploitation. Yet, SOCO International has continued its exploration and prospect of drilling the oil reserves thought to be stored under Lake Edward, at the center of the park, in spite of these laws. At present they have halted their activities in park but have yet to abandon them all together.
Virunga National Park is the last natural habitat for mountain gorillas. The population has reached a dismal low of 800. Not only is the park home to gorillas, but a number of other endangered species, including lions and elephants. The current efforts to defend the park and protect the gorillas has fallen in the hands of brave park rangers who have said they will defend Virunga until their last dying breath.
Unfortunately, political unrest and the proliferation of armed rebel groups continually threaten the work of the park rangers, and poaching persists. The work of SOCO directly undermines the security of Virunga and the Democratic Republic of Congo as a whole. There is substantial evidence that SOCO is funding these armed rebels in an effort to overthrow the protection of Virunga and, as a result, further destabilizing an already extremely unstable situation so they may drill for oil with the potential to gain billions of dollars.
The people of the Congo, Virunga National Park, and the gorillas need our help. The operations of companies like SOCO have gotten rich by exploiting people and land, for far too long. We as a global community need to speak out against these atrocities. This story is far too familiar, and one that continues to play out again and again. In the name of social justice, environmental justice, and the environmental security for the planet, tell SOCO to STOP!